H&S scene;

Page 1

Our man in Havana
On an Eastern Airlines DC-8 from
Atlanta approaching Miami, the "Fas­ten
Seat Belts" light had already
flashed on, when Dick Skelly, Miami
MAS consultant, heard the man seated
next to him tell two companions near­by:
"It's time to go."
22
One stood up in the aisle and held a
gun on the stewardess. Another waved
a pistol to show the passengers he was
armed. Dick asked his seat mate, as
calmly as he could, "Are you going to
take us on a trip?"
The leader of the trio told him firmly,
"Cool it, man." So Dick cooled it. In
fact, he had the next 18 hours to cool
his heels because his aircraft became
one more in the long line of planes hi­jacked
to Cuba.
During their extended trip, Dick and
his fellow passengers on Eastern's
Flight 121 were by turns nervous and
bored. One passenger, who said he was
a Texan and knew how to shoot, tried
to grab the hijackers' luggage to find
another gun. Fortunately he was re­strained
before panic broke out. An
elderly woman passenger behind Dick
did not really know what was happen­ing.
She looked out the window as the
plane was landing and exclaimed: "My,
Miami looks pretty at night!"
Dick merely said, "Ma'am, I've been
flying into Miami for ten years and that
down there is not Miami." As the
meaning of Dick's reply dawned upon
her, the woman's eyes opened wide in
astonishment.
To some people, hijacking is an ad­venture.
To others it is an inconve­nience.
But to Dick it was an oppor­tunity
to compare Cuba today with the
Cuba he had visited many times before
Fidel Castro came to power.
The plane landed in Havana about
10:30 at night. Dick said that marked
the start of what seemed to him like
calculated harassment of the passen­gers.
For an hour and a half after land­ing,
they were kept waiting at the
airport and told nothing of what was to
be done with them or when they could
leave. At midnight, Cuban officials
offered them ham and cheese sand­wiches
with orange juice. The meal,
Dick said, was hardly appetizing.
Then came a two-hour wait. At 2 a.m.
the passengers were herded aboard
buses for a weary ride to the former
Varadero Beach Hotel, renamed now
for heroes of the revolution. Dick
called Varadero "once the most beauti­ful
beach in the Caribbean."
After a short rest, the passengers
were aroused at 8 a.m., offered ham
and cheese sandwiches again, then
were left to wait in uncertainty. Dur­ing
their enforced inactivity, Dick said,
they observed a large number of Rus­sians
and Chinese at the resort area,
but the forced visitors were not per­mitted
to enjoy its pleasures.
At 12:30 in the afternoon they were
offered a greasy fried chicken lunch
and then were told to get ready to leave.
Finally, at 2 p.m., the group boarded
buses and were driven to the airport.
Two propeller planes waited to trans­port
the DC-8 passengers to Miami.
The Castro government had contended
that the runway at Havana's airport is
too small to allow a fully loaded jet to
take off. All planes, scheduled or not,
pay landing and other airport fees,
which help to bolster the hard-pressed
island economy. Recently, however,
fully loaded jets have been permitted
to leave from Havana.
By the time they were back at the
airport, Dick and his fellow passengers
were more than ready to leave. At the
last minute, though, Cuban officials
said a hotel key was missing and no
plane could leave till all the keys had
been accounted for.
By 3 p.m., nearly 18 hours after the
episode began, Dick was on his way
home. Awaiting him at H&S in Miami
was a schedule that included a trip to
Orlando within a few days. He won­dered
if he should drive this time.